X-Men: The Last Stand (Dr. Worm)

Let me start off by proclaiming that X-Men: The Last Stand is a good movie. All three X-Men movies are excellent, in fact, and if you haven't seen either of the first two, you need to stop reading this article and get down to your nearest video rental store posthaste. This article is directed at those of you who have seen the first two installments of the X-Men series and are anticipating seeing the third with this question in mind: Does it hold up?
Fortunately, the answer to this question is yes, for the most part, it does. But the remainder of this review will discuss the various ways that X3 is a minor step back from the first two films, with "minor" being the word to bear in mind here.
As many of you know, the X-Men series had changed directorial hands between films two and three, from Brian Singer to Brett Ratner. Much has been published about this shift, but when all is said and done, it's a fairly inconsequential shift. Ratner does his style-less thing, not ruining the series but not putting his stamp on it either. In fact, if you didn't know beforehand about the new director, I doubt you'd notice the difference.
The less publicized but more consequential change is the change in the writing team. And in truth, this seems the less consequential change: After swapping out Bryan Singer and Tom DeSanto wholesale for Zak Penn and David Hayter between X1 and X2, the shift to X3 seems tamer, with Zak Penn staying on and Simon Kinberg joining him.
Really, I don't know if it's the change from Hayter to Kinberg that made the difference, or if Zak Penn just tried too hard this time, but it's the screenplay itself that left the bad taste in my mouth.
I don't want to give away too much, so I'll describe the difference by analogy. Suppose you go a restaurant and order a clam chowder, expecting it to be just your standard, run-of-the-mill chowder. But when you eat it, it's far more delicious than you ever expected. So you go ask the chef his secret, and he says that he sprinkles a bit of garlic in there just to give it a bit more zip. So you compliment him on his decision and go your way.
Three years later, you happen to have a chance to go back to the same restaurant, and—remembering the delicious chowder from last time—you order it again. But this time, when you dig in, all you taste is garlic. It overwhelms all the other tastes that made the chowder such a sensuous symphony before, and leaves you disappointed, misunderstood, and with terrible bad breath.
You know what happened, of course. The chef figured that if the garlic is the best part, more of the best part can only make it better. But you and I both know things don't work that way. It's the subtle balance that made the initial chowder so savory, and it's the destruction of that balance that made the third X-Men somewhat dissatisfying.
That's the major problem. The other problem didn't affect this movie so much, but will certainly affect X4 if they decide to make it (which, judging by the ending, they certainly want to). And the problem here—to switch metaphors yet again—is that they've painted themselves into a corner. Now, judging by the ending, they'll find a way out of that corner, but they'll do so in a way that changes the rules they made in this movie. It's a bit like playing sports with a nine-year-old who insists, whenever something doesn't go his way, that it didn't count. The writers of the fourth X-Men film will find a more creative way to do this, of course, but the end result will be the same: The third movie didn't count.
Now I'll repeat my assertion from the beginning of this review: Despite my critique, this was still a good movie. Given my intricate, 450-word dissertation on its faults, that may be hard to believe, but it really was. Kelsey Grammmer did a perfect job as Beast and Vinnie Jones was very entertaining as Juggernaut, both debuting in this installment of the series. Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, and Hugh Jackman are as awesome as they ever were, and no one else really craps the bed here, actingwise.
In the end, I'm forced to agree wholeheartedly with the average IMDB user rating for all three films.
For the original, it's a 7.3, which becomes a 10 on the 22 scale.
For X2, it's a 7.9, which is a 13 on the 22 scale.
For X-Men: The Last Stand it's a 7.0, or a 9 on the 22 scale.
All good movies, all occupying similar spots on the 22 scale, but X3, with its extra garlic powder, just isn't quite as delicious as its predecessors.